Historic Boston: Things to Do on the 4th
Photo of the day, July 3, 2009: After Hours
Massachusetts in general, and Boston in particular, is famous for having dozens of colleges and hundreds of thousands of college students. But do we fund them well? The Globe reports that our state is stingier than most when it comes to financial aid. We offer only $83 million in aid as opposed to the $273 offered by South Carolina--hardly known for its institutes of higher education. We offer half the national average of aid as a percentage of costs, covering less than 5% of the cost of attending schools. We also devote half the national average of our higher education budget to financial aid. And all these statistics refer to public funding, meaning they don't even take into account the much higher prices of the many private schools in Massachusetts. What's a poor kid to do? Not go to school in Massachusetts, it seems.
Statistics are from the National Association of State Student Grant and Aid Programs.
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What a revealing story. I knew from anecdotal evidence that Mass does a poor job of funding its college students, but I had no idea of just how bad it is. To me, what was most significant about the study is the fact that the total grant aid awarded by MA has declined 27% in the last five years, a period during which states on average increased their budget over 42% (despite budget crises, for example, CA has increased almost 50%).
The recent decline would be easy enough to blame on Romney, but I see it as a deeper reflection of the state's lack of commitment to its public colleges. While you're right that this situation is even worse for students attending private institutions, those students are likely to see some of the disparity covered by their often munificent institutions. The state continues to kowtow to its admittedly great private colleges, leaving students to the largesse of these institutions. When you allow yourself to be governed by someone who in his worst moments wondered whether the state needed a public university system at all, you have only yourself to blame.
yeah. it seems like yet another way in which massachusetts is backwards... when your private schools are better funded than your public, what's the point of the public schools, anyway?